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Brian Lara on a playstation with a friend is the most fun you can have in a cricket game. When its close game every delivery can be nervewracking, it feels like a real game with the runs drying up and the screw turning until the inevitable yorker comes!

I've had hours of fun from Brian Lara '07, although I bought it over Ashes 09 as I was feeling more cheapskate and had heard mixed things about it. Basically, they're (somewhat) true, but that doesn't stop it being enjoyable. You can patch the names to be correct but they never patched the AI, and it is too easy once you get used to it. When you figure out how to bowl proper swing, you can skittle the AI fairly easily (although not always). Also the AI and the confidence system for batsmen are built around Twenty20, which means that the AI will try to take at least a run a ball, and if you don't do that, your batsman will lose confidence and the timing window for hitting a shot successfully gets smaller. It also means that scores will rocket up fast, both from the AI and from you, as the batting mechanics do allow for easy boundaries once you get the hang of it. I've never seen a test match - both innings - get into even the second day against the AI, but the sort of scores that can be produced aren't outside the realms of possibility. Swings and roundabouts, and whether you'd want to play it to real life pace is debateable.

The second big problem is fielding, which is far too tricky. 80% of catches, especially to the keeper, will be dropped because the timing window is too finicky, and throws back to the keeper from the fielder will always be dropped prior to him picking the ball up again to hit the stumps (making run outs of the AI virtually impossible).

However, if you have a 360 pad (you'll need it), the batting mechanics are very satisfying, the bowling allows variation, and in terms of a basic representation of these two key parts of the game BLC has them down in a very pleasing, satisfying way. In the process of learning the game you can have some very good matches, and even after this the AI can occasionally be surprising. But it does get very easy when you know how. I hear Ashes 09 was very similar, and an improvement for fielding, so it depends how much you want to spend. I never expected too much from BLC07 and I've had an enormous amount of fun with it.